I recently found a netflix documentary on minimalism. Interesting. I am not sure I could live in an empty room like some of them do, but I can certainly cut back on about 50% of what I have to slave to pay for. Why work only to give half to the government ?

i think we are substantially tribal people- we feel comfortable in the culture we grew up in (unless it was really a bad one). I feel the desire to live among fellow deplorables, and away from hillary leftists. Our constitution wasnt such a bad thing, so long as its upheld.

But it IS different here in the USA from when I was in college in the 70's. All bets are off as to what powers the government has now. There seems to be no limit.
There is a TV series Lilyhammer on netflix, and assuming they accurately portray life in Norway, I couldnt handle the social control there along with the regulations and restrictions imposed on citizens. I suspect there are other countries that would offer better advantages than the USA at this point.

We are slaves. You have to pay tax to uncle same no matter where you live, unless you give up citizenship. But you can't give up your citizenship until you have a new passport somewhere else (not fast or cheap) and if you do get a new passport and give-up US citizenship, you have to pay a large exit tax if you have appreciated assets. We are financially trapped here.

Bill Clinton was the one who made it hard to renounce citizenship without paying off the US government in advance for any "gains" not yet realized, and agreeing to pay taxes here for I think 10 years after. They always protect their income stream.

We are looking at going to China for an extended length of time. We'll know within a month if this is going to workout.

my girlfriend and i just dropped off the grid...we bought an RV...now we workcamp...travel and work...pays the bills...and meet great people...record numbers are off the grid...raising familes, getting out from under housing debt or been priced out of the market...our next job is this summer in Yellowstone...then Amazon distribution ctr in dallas...we have work in 2018 already lined up...go to: workamper.com...8-10 job opennings every day...

Then, and I speak as one of that rare class of persons called "natural born citizens of the United States" (meaning a citizen born and bred on both sides of my family), those people are better gone.

My aunt and uncle lived about 4 blocks from the campus in Madison at that time as my uncle was a lawyer, I believe with the state. Anyway, I was in elementary school but was a military brat and lived on bases when dad was in the states. I was born in 1959, so I got to see the sixties but was to young to really understand. However I knew something wasn't right whenever there was a protest at whichever base we were on at the time. I knew plenty of airmen and soldiers who went to Nam but came back injured or didn't come back at all. My "best friend" Clarence was killed and came back in a coffin. So I knew the era but was to young to be drafted.

"I was with 3 months of discharge"
When I first saw this I thought this was slang for having 3 months of light or no duty to offset the always-on nature of work at sea, but now I get it. My dad was on the Kennedy, but I don't know much about the Navy beyond the few stories he tells. He got to see some sights of the world at a young age, but it seems like the job was a stressful kind of boredom. His friends got sent to Vietnam, and he went to the Mediterranean for the Jordanian Crisis. His job involved prepping (the 7 Ps), drilling, and then waiting for a fight that never came while his friends by sheer luck did have to fight.

A few years ago, I read They Marched into Sunlight about those years about a battle in Vietnam that happened at the same time as a protest in Madison. It is so weird to read because my parents and extended family remember those days. Aspects of the 60s university officials, some whom my family knows, are oddly reminiscent of people I know today. It's odd to read about Paul Saglin using his winter coat to protect himself from being beaten. Eight years later he became mayor, and is mayor right now. My grandmother said the Sterling Hall Bombing shook their house, and she immediately. It seems like it was a different world because I was born in '75, but it some ways oddly familiar.

I saw that article and thought that it's really misleading. It doesn't go back to some tax code. It comes down to the fact that more and more upper-middle class Americans are concerned that staying here will not be as good as leaving. Plain and simple.

It wasn't time off, we worked every day (7a-3p) and still ran a 1 in 4 day security rotation on the dry docked ship.

You had 3 months off from the US Navy, and a foreign beautiful foreign woman who owned a restaurant invited you live with her? It sounds like a spy movie.

I had no intention of reenlisting. Still, Norway was amazingly beautiful, the people were friendly and knew how to party and the women loved dark haired men :). I just couldn't bring myself to leaving the US with so much I haven't seen and done. Since then I've explored the US a bit more but then I got married and now I'm pretty much stationary. I do wonder what life may have been like had I stayed - the deep black waters of the fjordes, the black-market no-label Russian vodka, fresh seafood, and warm and welcoming blond haired women. Sigh...hindsight

But I do have a woman who loves me and two adult children. I shouldn't complain.

I was in the Navy also (1980-2001) but what I experienced was on the other side of the world and I ran into similar experiences. I was stationed in the Philippines and met a very nice Filipina who was a schoolteacher. Similar offer to stay when I got out, again close to discharge but reenlisted and returned to the US.

In 1987-88 I was in the Navy and drydocked in Norway for two months. After spending time with a few women and cooking for one it was time to return to the States. The woman I cooked for, as fortune would have it, was part owner in a restaurant, and, because I was with 3 months of discharge, invited me to live and work with her. Facing the idea if leaving America hit me like a wall. An assured job in a beautiful location with a seductive and alluring woman was a sure thing and thououghky enticing. In the end it came down to the country, I've seen a fair share of the US and knew my rights and Norway, in spite of everything, had alien rules and rights (I experienced some of them first hand while there). Obviously I returned home and here I am. For me it wasn't about money, it was home.

Best of luck to you.

I think it's part of the mega-trend of decreasing importance of the nation state.

I will leaving for Belize in a couple of months, as soon as I get my affairs in order. I have a lot of junk accumulated over 30 years or so. I have lots of stuff I carried around the world while in the military, papers and such that I am going through. Why in the world I would need Leave and Earning statements (LES's) from the 1980's I will never know but they are going in the burn barrel along with old utility bills and newsletters that are decades old that I retained for some unknown reason.

Even those who have other income and assets are often refused residence in first world countries. You are in good company, shared economic enslavement by the state.